Thursday, January 12, 2017

Rudy Giuliani has been
tapped to "lend expertise" and to advise the Trump administration on cybersecurity.

The former New York mayor
"will be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend concerning
private sector cybersecurity problems and emerging solutions developing in the
private sector," said a brief statement from the incoming Trump administration.

But details about Giuliani's
role were not immediately available.

Trump's pick of Giuliani for
this position isn't all too surprising to security
circles. It's widely known that he is the chief executive of his own
private-sector cybersecurity venture, Giuliani Partners.

Giuliani spent much of his
time consulting after leaving office as mayor of New York at the end of 2001.
His venture claims to offer "a comprehensive range of security and crisis
management services." His consulting firm has hired controversial
staffers, and has worked for questionable clientele, reports have said.

For the past few months
while Giuliani's name was floated for positions for the Republican's
presidential campaign, we've tried to find out exactly what his company does,
or can do better than any other security firm -- to no avail. (If you have
information relating to Giuliani's company, there are a number of ways to
contact me securely. We want to know, and we think others do as well.)

Yet, the company has made
millions of dollars in contracts with various organizations, including the 2016
Olympic Committee.

Giuliani was most recently a
guest speaker at the BlackBerry Security Summit earlier this year -- the day
after his bizarre appearance at the Republican National Committee -- to give an
equally unhinged speech comparing cybercrime to cancer and hackers to the
"Mafia."

The former phone maker
BlackBerry just last week announced that Giuliani's company would "assess
infrastructures, identify potential cyber security vulnerabilities, address
gaps and secure endpoints with the goal of offering another channel to bring
customers to a new standard of security."

So clearly the company is
doing something right. Right?

It's not known what Giuliani
can or will bring to the table. We've reached out to the presidential
transition team for more and will update if we hear back.

But right now there are more
questions than answers over Giuliani's involvement, given the lack of a clear
and transparent directive on what his company does or how it (if at all) will
benefit the transition team and the country.